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Ever eager to preserve and enhance the moral purity of American life, Sen. Jesse Helms has just persuaded the U.S. Senate to prevent the National Endowment for the Arts from supporting certain kinds of art.
Federal art funds will not be used to promote,
disseminate or produce obscene or indecent materials,
including but not limited to depictions of sadomasochism,
homoeroticism, the exploitation of children, or individuals
engaged in sex acts; or material which denigrates the
objects or beliefs of the adherents of a particular
religion or nonreligion.
That Senate action covers a lot of territory. Consider the famous Norman Rockwell painting of the boy and his grandmother saying grace over their meal in a cafe as two unbelieving louts, one smoking a cigarette, look on with sneers.
Could it be that the artist is denigrating
the
zealous beliefs of the grandmother, who insists on praying
at a time and place that must be quite embarrassing to the
boy?
Of course not, since the artist is wholesome Norman
Rockwell, and thus the nonbelievers must be the bad guys.
So Rockwell must be guilty of denigrating the objects or
beliefs of the adherents of a particular ...
nonreligion.
Thanks to Sen. Jesse Helms, is it now illegal for the National Endowment for the Arts to fund a traveling exhibition of Norman Rockwell's work? And if that painting fails to pass the Helms test, what painting could? Something utterly abstract, no doubt, but conservatives have never been all that fond of the Jackson Pollock school of splash painting, either.
Helms and the majority of the U.S. Senate transformed themselves from politicians into art critics on account of two exhibits financed by the National Endowment. One displayed a crucifix floating in the artist's urine, and the other included some homoerotic photos.
Many people were disgusted, and complained that their tax money ought not to be used that way. They were right, but for the wrong reason.
The myth is that there are thousands of gifted, creative artists who are starving in their attic garrets because Americans are such low-taste philistines that the pure, dedicated artist cannot sell his work. To keep these delicate, high-minded souls from succumbing to the brutal and dehumanizing demands of mundane commerce, there is the National Endowment for the Arts.
If there really are some starving Van Goghs in America, the Endowment doesn't help them anyway. Selling one's work is an ennobling and uplifting experience compared to the degradation involved in hustling a grant; an artist totally dedicated to art would no more fill out the interminable forms that the grant bureaucracy requires than he would set up in a parking lot and hawk his creative work next to the rows of Elvis on velvet.
Further, we have many state-supported universities which offer lucrative havens for the painters, sculptors, poets and novelists who are too incompetent to make a living by selling their work. And let us not forget the many private foundations which subsidize artists.
As a patronage program, the National Endowment is a
conspicuous failure, since it doesn't give money to
campaign contributors or to the relatives of office
holders. As a cultural program, the National Endowment has
yet to produce anything half as memorable as a Far Side
cartoon or a Jackie Collins schlockbuster. As a salve for
the conscience of a nation where the business of America
is business,
the National Endowment ends up trying to
support the politically unsupportable.
Rather than restrict the National Endowment for the Arts, the Senate should have abolished it. Artists have enough troubles without having to worry about Jesse Helms, too.
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